Steam - Just say no to bloatware on your computer. You dont get the 300 extra anyway. Skrill and click and buy make you create a new account with them and if you read the fine print they charge you extra hidden fees. Paypal wants me to get "verified" and give them my bank account so they can pull funds out of my bank account "no thank you". PW and Cryptic dont seem to trust me to give them a credit card # and then charge it. Pretty stupid to not trust your customers credit cards when you are offering a "virtual" product that has no real world value. If someone bounces a charge whats cryptic out ---- oh thats right nothing. I guess Cryptic is so worried that my credit card might be bad that they encourage me to spend $50 buying a different game to play rather than lettimg me by cpoints / zen or whatever mad thing they are calling it this week. Overall this promotion with a push to encourage people into signing up for 3rd party processors is VERY weak and once again disrespectful to their customers. If you want to sell a product then learn to accept payment for it. This garbage is like the scene in Auntie Mame where Mame could only write up COD tickets for the merchandise she sold. I can buy virtual product straight from every other game company that has an MMO including Blizzard, Lord of the Rings Online, and all the others. But with Cryptic I have to be pushed into a third party payment processor. Totally Lame

Sounds to me like your just butthurt that your credit card was denied and posted something craptacular here. And in regards to Steam - Huh ?? - I know many many people who've had Steam, like myself, for many many years. I've NEVER been charged any "hidden fees" and neither have they. In fact, I've gotten my entire library of older physical games on steam now for the price of around 1 new game. They have more distribution rights than any other online competitor, and it's a 1-2-3- process for moving my all my games in the on disk library (well over 1 TB), then reinstalling when I build a new gaming rig. All I can say for this entire post above is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Ive never in my life had a credit card charge denied. But maybe thats because I pay close attention to Eulas and hidden fees and charges. Steam probably does not charge hidden fees like Skrill and Click to Buy. But I dont want steam bloatware on my computer. If you like Steam and its bloatware then more power to you. I dont want it. And frankly I shouldnt have to add bloatware to my computer to take advantage of a promotion giving you a few hundred extra cpoints on a $50 purchase. I would guess that fewer than 1% of the people read the Eulas when they sign up for Skrill and/or click to buy. I can go to McDonalds hand them a credit card and get a hamburger. They scan it in a machine and dont worry if the charge bounces. And they serve a product they dont want back if the charge fails. Cryptic is a fee for service model and has minimal restocking fees if a credit card charge doesnt arrive. Every other mmo is happy taking my money and doing business with me. Cryptic is the only one that needs to hand my business off to a third party middleman that wants an extra hidden fee, bloat on my computer or other such nonsense. Other game companies are happy to accept my credit card and it doesnt seem Cryptic wants my business. They may want Steams business or Pay Pals or Googles or Skirlls but they dont want mine. And its kind of sad.

I wouldn't call steam bloatware. It has no hidden unwanted functions. It runs fine with no performance issues on nearly all systems I've put it on. The only exception being an early AMD APU, but even then I only needed the client to install the games. After that it can be bypassed. If you actually bother reading EULAs like you say, you would have noticed that virtually all proprietary software, especially games, use cumbersome DRM schemes. Steam's DRM is the least invasive I have ever encountered.

DRM is merely a euphemism for bloatware. Perhaps Steam is minimally invasive compared with other DRM bloatware but its still invasive. You could argue that malaria is minimally invasive compared to AIDS but I doubt you want it. I do not see a need to add bloatware to my computer regardless of how invasive it is just so I can buy zen points and get a small bonus. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/steam-makes-drm-obsolete-with-more-drm/4023 Its absurd to make me turn my game into as ZDNet says, "a slave to steam" just because Cryptic cannot be bothered to accept my credit card as a direct and legitimate form of payment for its services. If Cryptic chooses to sell to steam rather than me then its America and they have the right to do it this way. And I have the right to not buy from Steam and to keep their tracking software and bloatware off my computer.

Who the heck bothers with Steam? Steam's a rip-off anyhow. I have a download code for Batman: Arkham City which lets me download a corrupted file from Steam, and Steam technical support won't do anything about it.
If you're using Steam AND whining about Zen purchase problems, it's your fault.

Two sep. issues you are presenting, so I'll handle em as such. No one is whining about a Zen purchase problem and steam, they are complaining about being shortchanged (and rightfully so) for their correct Zen during a advertisement campaign. Second, techincally you are correct in saying if we are using Steam it's our fault, because we did choose to use steam. However, it's not Steam's fault PWE's system doesn't credit the correct amount as stated in their advertisement. Steam provides the payment, it's PWE's system that didn't compute the correct amount. That's why PWE's customer service are crediting those that actually did purchase and got shortchanged the appropriate amount, and not referring us to Steam customer support. Just stop, breathe, and think a second, mate :)

I was the person who asked about why my purchase of 5000 zen did not give the amount shown in the table. I got a note today pointing out that my payment method doesn't grant the extra 300 bonus, please see the link below, etc... except that when I bought the thing, I read that section to ensure that I was using a method that DID grant bonus and I do not recall seeing a word (nor a parenthetic note) about the 300 bonus NOT being provided through my method. Though it DID state that the method worked to get the 15%.
Which means either they changed the page (oh who would ever do that?! Certainly not Cryptic, wait... yes, my memory IS that long. But maybe they fired the guys who got caught changing their promised rewards during the CO beta so nobody would be around to know that this is a bad idea to do without clearly noting what you've done. Hypothetically.)
I already noted that I did get the 15% bonus. According to what is on the page today, I received everything to which I am entitled according to their offer and my payment.
THIS IS FINE. The 15% bonus was good enough, even without the standard 300.
It may be that they discovered too late that my payment service won't handle more than one bonus per transaction, or it may be that I simply managed, somehow, to overlook the clearly marked advisory (in parenthesis.) After all I don't read every contract I sign ... oh wait, yes I do, because I'm not stupid. Wherever there is money mentioned. I always note it. Even in EULAs. Because I've been burned before for not doing that, MANY years ago.
So it's just $3.00 -- AND I could have been wrong. Lacking a screen shot, I cannot tell you for certain that I didn't misread it. However unlikely, since I read it three times before posting. But the post now states that my method doesn't give the bonus. Which is fine.
If they DID change it, then it's only polite (and sadly, unlikely) that they would note that it was an error and apologize, but there's no requirement for them to pay out more for that, because it wasn't a deliberate fraud. And their form letter was formishly apologetic about ... something carefully phrased to be non-actionable, so a bit too vague to tell if they were apologizing for MY alleged mistake. Which, well. Yeah. That would be rude and a bit weird. but again, the people who do the job don't get paid enough to go off the script.
Seriously, forum people, remember there are people on the other end of this little brown box you type into, and some of them have to read what you say because it's their job, so avoid spewing nonsense at them and at me.
I wasn't demanding something that shouldn't be there, I was asking for what I paid for. I posted here first because it took me over a half hour to find the way to submit a problem ticket, because it's fairly well hidden behind a lower-case menu and a drop-down link, and I wanted to raise the issue in case something WAS broken.
Don't be trolls. If you don't want to use the service they offer, you don't have to. Unless it's clearly fraudulent, there's no need for you to run down an offer you don't personally intend to use. And if someone else uses it and notices something come out wrong? Shut up and sit on your hands unless you have something actually useful to contribute. Make this place a better forum than the usual ones.

Bought through Steam, and YES I read the post - but had an issue getting the correct amount of Zen. Contacted PWE support via email with clear description of issue, proof of purchase from Steam, and relevant additional details and they responded within 3 hours and credited my account the appropriate amount!
While there's obviously problems in some areas, customer service handled this on a Sunday well within my reasonable estimates. Kudo's guys :)

I do wish that Perfect World would price there items at a reasonable price. But, they can't find anything better to do to earn cash... they should do car washes... :D If they lowered prices, I would be happy. But, the Value of the ships are mostly correct, because value is what people are willing to pay. So we should lower the value by simply not buying the ZEN...

Buy through PayPal, of course, if you have an account with them. Yes, they do take a slice of the action, but not as much as my UK banks do (LloydsTSB and Barclays).
Please, do not abuse me because I suggest PayPal - I understand some won't touch PayPal with a barge pole.

What a joke. $20-$30 for a single ship? The bonus basically lets you buy some random trinket along with what you wanted, it's not enough to actually let you get something at a discount. If it was more like 50% I would have gotten something.

The only thing getting ripped off is your head apparently. How about you try using it next time and actually read the description where it SPECIFICALLY says not Steam? "Steam (**Not eligible for the bonus 300 ZEN)" Idiot... &gt;_&gt;

apparently you guys cant read steam is under the list to give the bonus and agentnx5, tat is for the 50 dollar bonus read next time. and Madman2112 you need to have STO downloaded through steam. then once you have logged in to the game go to the C-store and where it says buy zen, click that button and it will prompt you for how much. but at the top of the box there should be a drop-down bar and steam should be listed.

Honestly I'm just happy the game itself is free. I do agree that certain things like storage upgrades to your bank or inventory are terribly over-priced given that they directly affect permanent game functionality, but as for the rest, it's a free-market economy, they can charge whatever the heck they want. If anyone's willing to pay the price, they'll charge it. B*tching and complaining about it isn't going to change their minds. They might lower prices if people stopped buying, but there's always someone who's got money to blow on something imaginary. C'est la vie.

The 15% bonus on zen isn't that awesome, i find zen overly expsensive for the price of items in game, it just doesn't seen right to spend 20 bucks worth of zen to buy 4 ship modules that i zen need to spend another 20 - 50 bucks to get the ship, so i'll pass but thanks for the effort

PSA: If you bought zen recently and did not get your 15% bonus, contact Perfect World customer service with your e-reciept and you will get your rightful bonus.
This is what they said to me:
"Greetings,
Thank you for contacting us about this issue.
We apologize for the delay in receiving your 15% bonus Zen. The appropriate amount of Zen has been credited to your account and should be available to you at this time.
Thank you for playing!
Customer Support
Cryptic Studios / Perfect World Entertainment"
- William@chandlerashari
Joint Chief
Starfleet Medical Command